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Apple Dumplings

It’s been a while since I tried a recipe from Martha’s show. Recently she made apple dumplings with the author of The Apple Lovers’ Cookbook. I had to make this one.

For several years, we rented a cottage each summer in New York state’s Finger Lakes region, on Cayuga Lake. One of our favorite things to do was visit Sauder’s Store in Seneca Falls (the town that Bedford Falls in the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” was modeled after). Sauder’s was smaller then than it is now (now they sell woodcrafted items and plants outside), but it had a huge bulk section and lots of Mennonite and Amish made baked goods. There were always Mennonites shopping in the store when we were there, which my kids were fascinated by. There is a bookstore section that sells Mennonite and Amish cookbooks and other books. We always purchased birch beer (similar to root beer) here, a treat we always enjoyed at the fair each summer, but which you could not find in stores at that time. There was a meat case and I always bought Lebanon bologna, a cold cut that looks exactly like salami, but tastes like sweet bologna.

The baked goods were the highlight (whoopie pies, breads, pies, cookies) and apple dumplings were one of our favorites. I’ve never tried to make this and really forgot about it until I saw it again on Martha’s show!

I followed the instructions on this recipe to a “T”, but I think the problem was that my apples were too big. It’s really hard to find small apples here in NY state, where our apple crop is a big deal and sellers pride themselves on selling big, ripe, beautiful apples. I ended up cutting an inch or so off the tops of my apples, but they were still too big to fit in the dough squares. I ended up rolling the pieces of dough out to be larger and I still had to smush them to get them to cover most of the apples.

Other than, that it went well. The cider sauce is simple and it was all much easier than I imagined. This was really delicious. I think I might make regular pie crust next time instead of this dough recipe. I will definitely make this again. The entire family loved this.

4 Responses

That was my apple dumpling recipe that you made and I’m glad you were generally happy with the results. It is, indeed, difficult to find small apples these days. One trick is to not only trim your apples so they’re shorter, but also cut a little off the sides. Basically, you just want them small enough so that you don’t have to stretch the dough to get it around the fruit. This particular dough is less buttery than pie crust, but I kind of liked how it turned out when it baked in the sauce…not to buttery and crumbly but just enough.

Hi Amy. Thanks for stopping by and for the tips on the apples. I would love a version of this recipe that works with regular size apples, since the small ones are hard to find and I didn’t like having to cut pieces off and toss them.

One option is to simply halve 3 large apples crosswise and divide the halves among the dumplings. otherwise, you can double the amount of dough to accommodate large fruit. Double the filling too. Same amount of syrup, though.